Speak // 07.04.2017 // Curated by Ed.

AskED. What learners are saying about free passes for cheating students

Headlines say lecturers are feeling pressured to pass students who do not make the grade.

A student caught cheating three times was still allowed to pass the course. We’re told that lecturers who don’t pass 85% of their students are grilled in their performance reviews. Other students were told they were “guaranteed” a pass. It’s not great. For anybody, really, but mainly for students. Ed. got out and asked what they thought.

Vikesh

Letting cheating students pass is an absolute disgrace; It undermines all the hard work the rest of us put in. If anything, I find it disrespectful. I mean, if you can just cheat to pass, what’s the point of even putting in all that work?

From a career point of view, it harms the student as well, because when they cheat through the process, they are forgoing the whole learning process, which pumps out an unskilled employee.

Craig

I think there’s a lot of pressure on academic staff to pass them, so they gain their qualification, and I’m not quite comfortable with that.

Tyrone

I think cheating is always going to be something that happens at universities. It’s not really fair to the rest of us. So, I say the universities have to take some extra procedures.

Spencer

If they don’t want us to cheat, they gotta make sure that we can’t do it. If it’s that easy, then students are gonna go ahead and do it anyway because we have marks on our grades and not the way we learn.

Rosena

It’s the university’s fault if they’re not implementing a strategy to prevent students from being able to cheat.

Jack

It’s unfair to the students that aren’t cheating, who are putting in all their effort in. I don’t know what they’re doing with the lecturers, but for them to just give them the marks, I think it’s unfair for the students that are trying.